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A retrospective diagnosis (also retrodiagnosis or posthumous diagnosis) is the practice of identifying an illness in a historical figure using modern knowledge, methods and disease classifications.[1][2] Alternatively, it can be the more general attempt to give a modern name to an ancient and ill-defined scourge or plague.[3]

Retrospective diagnosis is practised by medical historians, general historians and the media with varying degrees of scholarship. At its worst it may become "little more than a game, with ill-defined rules and little academic credibility."[2] The process often requires "translating between linguistic and conceptual worlds separated by several centuries",[4] and assumes our modern disease concepts and categories are privileged.[4] Crude attempts at retrospective diagnosis fail to be sensitive to historical context, may treat historical and religious records as scientific evidence, or ascribe pathology to behaviours that require none.[5] The understanding of the history of illness can benefit from modern science. For example, knowledge of the insect vectors of malaria and yellow fever can be used to explain the changes in extent of those diseases caused by drainage or urbanisation in historical times.[3]